


Fireworks

by 8sword



Series: Fireworks [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bottom Dean, Doctor!Castiel, Domestic Castiel/Dean Winchester, Emergency room, M/M, Medical Jargon, PWP, The Great Escapist, nurse practitioner!Dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-02
Updated: 2014-04-02
Packaged: 2018-01-17 21:24:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1402924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/8sword/pseuds/8sword
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The nurses like to tease Cas all the time about how he never gets any action, cooped up in his Batcave of computer screens looking at X-rays and CTs, to which Cas retorts that he’s used to not getting any action because his boyfriend is so lazy. Which gets him a shove to the shoulder and subsequent “you can’t call THIS lazy” sex when he and Dean get home.</p><p>(Sort of timestamp to The Great Escapist.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fireworks

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Great Escapist](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1021182) by [8sword](https://archiveofourown.org/users/8sword/pseuds/8sword). 



> Um. UMMMMM. This is sort of a time-stamp to "The Great Escapist" (like way in the future time-stamp) but can also be read on its own. MOSTLY IT IS AN EXCUSE TO WRITE PWP AND TO HAVE A FIC TO GO WITH THAT DEAN SHOWER GIF from the 9.18 promo BECAUSE OOOH, GURL. DAYUM.
> 
> Joshua Tree National Park and Mojave National Preserve are both located near Parker, Arizona. Geography and hospital protocol and treatment continue to be used with great factual liberty in this fic, my apologies.
> 
> This fic is so inappropriate. So very inappropriate. I really do apologize.

 

They probably wouldn't get away with it in a larger hospital. But the staff at Parker is small enough, its members close enough, that when Dean gets an interesting case in ER, one he knows Cas would like, he pages him to come take a look. The nurses like to tease Cas all the time about how he never gets any action, cooped up in his Batcave of computer screens looking at X-rays and CTs, to which Cas retorts   that he's used to not getting any action, his boyfriend is so lazy. Which gets him a shove to the shoulder and subsequent "you can't call _this_ lazy" sex when he and Dean get home, which basically means Cas is a winner all the way around.

It also means that Cas has to change the bed sheets, _again_ ("he who does the riding is excused from the Tiding," Dean insists, which makes Cas roll his eyes and also point out that they use Gain--"He who does the analing does not do the Gainaling?" Dean attempts, which earns him a flick to the ass), and also drag the bed frame away from the wall because if it knocks against the wall any harder they may actually break a hole in the plaster, but other than that. All-around win.

Anyway. The point is that it's Saturday, just after lunch, and Dean's got an interesting case. (He's also got just half an hour left until he and Cas are skiving off, having wrangled their schedules to work 1-to-1 shifts to have Saturday afternoon off, and he keeps pressing his elbow against the inside of his white coat to feel the object inside it press comfortingly against his hip.) A sixty-year-old male with hypertension and a fifty-pack-year history came in complaining of not being able to see out of his left eye, onset two hours ago. His vision on that side's shot; he can tell that Dean's holding up three fingers but not much else, and Dean's already got a consult out to the on-call ophthalmologist by the time he gets a hold of the tropicamide to dilate the guy's eyes. He's suspecting some sort of vascular occlusion, either the central artery or vein, and he knows Cas has got kind of a hard-on for looking at eye vasculature, not that he gets to see a lot of it, amid endless chest x-rays and head CTs, so he says, "Hey, Ava, you wanna see if Cas wants to run down here?"

Ava runs off to get him. Cas is only like her favorite person in the world, which, okay, it's been literally years now since he and Cas moved in together, but sometimes Dean still has to get used to the fact that Cas has actually become a fairly social human being, capable of charming people who aren't Frank Devereaux or Jesse Turner.

He turns back to Mr. Papazian. Grabs the swivel stool from the corner and scoots close with the ophthalmoscope to peer inside his pupil. It only takes a minute to see that his second guess was right. There's hemorrhages all over the place inside the guy's eye, red blotches bursting like fireworks across the yellow retina from all the blood getting backlogged by the blockage.

"All right," he says, drawing back and setting the ophthalmoscope down. "Bear with me for a second here, okay, Mr. Papazian. I want you to close your eye and press your fingers against it, like when you're tired, okay? Sort of massage it."

"Why?" the guy says, not moving to do it. He looks suspicious, and Dean can't blame him.

"I think you've got a little blood clot in there blocking one of your blood vessels," Dean says. "We're gonna start you on a medication to relieve some of the pressure in your eye until the eye doctor gets here, but in the meantime we might be able to dislodge the clot by massaging your eye. _Capisce_?"

The guy gets started massaging his eye, and Dean jogs over to the nurse's station to see if they've gotten the aspirin and acetazolamide yet.

When he gets back to the room, meds in hand, Cas is just coming down the hall. He's got his reading glasses, the ones he wears while he's squinting at computer screens in the dark, pushed up on his head, and he's squinting around like he can't see without them.

He sees Dean. "Ava said you needed a consult?"

"False," Dean says. "Got a cool case, thought you'd wanna take a look. C'mon."

He ducks around the patient's curtain, grabs the pitcher of water beside the bed. "All right, Mr. Papazian, I got some medications for you to take for that clot, okay? In the meantime, Dr. Novak-Shurley's a radiologist here, you mind if he takes a look?"

Papazian grunts, pulling his hand away from his eye. "Be my guest, I guess."

The ophthalmologist comes in while Cas is peering into the guy's eye; Cas promptly hands the scope off to him, and he and Dean step toward the back of the room.

"Well," Cas says. "It looked surprisingly like the examples in our textbooks."

"Right?" Dean says. "When does that ever happen?"

"Oh, I don't know," Cas deadpans. "Priapism looks pretty identical to all the teaching pictures."

Dean snorts and shoves him. "Yeah, you'd know, wouldn't you?"

" _You_ would," Cas retorts.

Dean steps on his toes in retaliation. It probably doesn't hurt, much, since Dean's wearing the lame-ass but super-comfortable nursing shoes everyone always makes fun of him for that are super-cushy on the bottom. But it's the thought that counts. "You're an ass."

"You're an assbutt."

"Assface."

"Ass gluteus."

"Seriously?"

They turn. Ava's standing in the hall behind them, hands on her hips. She raises her eyebrows at them. Dean grins. Cas pulls his glasses down onto his nose and attempts to look mature and professional.

"Go back to your cave," Ava tells him. To Dean, she says, "Cooper wants to know if you can work till seven."

"What? No way! You know how much ass I had to kiss to get me and Cas off this afternoon?"

Cas hides a smirk behind his fist. Dean immediately backs up. "NOT what I meant! Not--God, just tell me who needs to leave early."

"Randa," Ava says. She's grinning unapologetically at him, clearly filing his verbal misstep away for later blackmail. "I guess her kid threw up at her Girl Scout retreat, she's gotta drive out to Mojave to pick her up."

Dean lets out a breath. Cas watches him, eyes squinted in that way that means he suspects Dean's hiding something. Which--not cool, and Dean clamps his elbow against his side just to make sure he can still feel the box in the pocket of his white coat. Like it could have fallen out between now and the last time he felt for it, ten minutes ago.

When he feels its familiar edge dig into his hipbone, he sighs. Thinks of Randa, and also Sam, because he always thinks of Sam when he thinks of kids, and of how shitty it is to be a sick kid who doesn't have a parent coming to pick you up, and okay, Joshua Tree can wait. The thing in his pocket can wait.

 

\- o -

 

When he gets home just after eight that night, Cas is sacked out on the couch in his collared shirt and slacks. His coat hangs lopsidedly from the back of one of the kitchen counter stools. Dean's so tired that he fumbles his own off and tosses it in the direction of the other stool without bothering to see if it makes it, heading over to the armchair and collapsing into it in his scrubs despite his own stringent No Work Scrubs on the House Furniture Because That's Fucking Gross rule.

He rubs his eyes with his hands. White sparks burst behind his eyelids, fade. He yawns, lets go of his eyes and stretches out his legs, reaching with his feet until his socked toes brush the top of Cas's head where it hangs half over the edge of the sofa cushions.

Cas groans. Turns his head over, the soft mess of his hair silky against Dean's sock, and burrows into one of the weirdly elaborate throw pillows Naomi insisted on buying for them.

Dean scoots a little further down in the armchair. His toes brush the back of Cas's head, flex against his scalp.

"Dean," Cas mumbles into the pillow. "Go. To. Sleep."

"Dude," Dean says with a yawn. "I'm not gonna call you to share in the action of my awesome ER if it means no action for me at home."

Cas shifts on the couch. Raises his middle finger over his shoulder.

Dean grins and slides out of the armchair. He pads over to the couch and leans forward against the cushion and Cas's shoulders, so Cas's finger is against the crease of his thigh and hip, and the increasingly interested body part beside it.

Cas is still for a minute. Then he gives a theatrical sigh and rolls over in one swift movement, fingers closing around a handful of Dean's blue scrub pants, and drags Dean with him into the bathroom.

Dean kind of loses track of who undresses who after that. Kind of loses track of a lot of things... The hot water's really soothing, reminding him how his calves and the bottoms of his feet ache after eighteen hours on them, and so is Cas's kneading of his shoulders and sides and ass, and somewhere in there their violent kissing sort of lazies into mouthing and breathing and...snoring.

They startle awake when Cas's bottle of Head & Shoulders topples over. Dean jerks backward, his shoulder hitting the tile and knocking over more bottles that clatter down around them, and at the same time Cas's hand shoots out to grab the shower curtain, pulling too hard and yanking it down onto them in a mess of fogged plastic and broken shower rings.

The racket finally settles. Dean blinks at Cas, water sluicing down his face and eyelids. His eyes are big and green and shocked against the paler green of the shower tile behind him.

Then they crinkle up as he bursts into laughter.

Cas grins. He pulls the shower curtain the rest of the way down, over Dean's head.

Then he scrambles out of the shower and makes a run for the single dry towel waiting on the rack.

Dean yelps and laughs and curses, clawing the curtain off and scrambling out of the shower after him to make a dart for the same towel. A tussle ensues in which Dean wins and Cas accuses Dean of never washing his towels and Dean states he doesn't need to wash towels because he's so hot that water just sizzles off him. Which prompts Cas to look pointedly at the beads of water still trailing down Dean's neck from his hairline and Dean to pull the towel around his shoulders defensively.

Cas steps close. Puts his mouth to one trickling droplet and drags it dry with his lips. Finds another and licks it away with his tongue. Breathes on another, blows on it and watches it pause, and waver, and shiver back up under Cas's breath to pool in Dean's collarbone.

Dean is trembling, too.

Cas smiles and pulls the towel from him. Pulls it over his head instead, and towels his hair, until the light brown strands stand up in soft spikes.

Dean leans into him. Gets his fingers curled around Cas's neck, thumbs in the swoops of his clavicle, and teases Cas's mouth open with his. Twines their tongues together.

They crawl backward into the bed like that, open-mouthed, touching, breathing.

The bed sheets are crumpled from their hasty departure yesterday morning. But still soft. Soft against naked skin. Cas settles over Dean, perfect-warm in the chill of a desert night, murmuring adoration into the hollows of his ribs, and yes, yes, fireworks seem to be the theme of the day, going off inside Dean's chest as he scrabbles to hold Cas closer.

 

\- o -

 

Cas wakes up first the next morning, biceps and calves pleasantly sore. He slides out from under the covers to go start coffee. The windows in the living area are still shut, so even though there was sun streaming through the cracks in the bedroom shutters, the kitchen is still dark, and he doesn't see the thing he steps on until he steps on it.

"The _fuck_ \--?!"

He grabs the stool at the counter, catching his balance. Screws his eyes and mouth shut for a moment. Tries _not_ to think about the pain coursing through his instep.

Then he lets out a breath and opens his eyes. Squints at the floor to find the sharp object that just met his foot and sees the dark cubic shape on the floor, bends to pick it up.

His eyes widen.

 

\- o -

 

One minute Dean's still floating in that comfy place between awake and not-awake. The next, there's arms around him and some nice warmth around his morning wood, too. And a mouth on his ear, his jaw, his eyelids.

"Mmm," he says, arching lazily back into all the nice touches. Cas's mouth finds the underside of his neck. "Hey, babe."

"Hey," Cas murmurs back, throaty. Dean's dick jumps forward into his hand. Cas laughs and Dean just grins, eyes still closed, stretching an arm back behind him to find the back of Cas's neck and sift up into his hair, pull him closer.

Cas rumbles against his Adam's apple. His hand leaves Dean's cock to slide up his stomach to his chest and thumb idly at a nipple. Dean groans, half in encouragement, half in protest.

Cas's mouth moves to his earlobe. Dean catches his breath, and pants, and finally manages to say, "Baby. Not that I'm complaining, but what's the occasion?"

Cas doesn't say anything, teeth continuing to graze back and forth along Dean's earlobe. Instead he sweeps his hand very pointedly down Dean's chest, and then back up, to splay his fingers over the same nipple as before, and that's when Dean notices it. The band of coolness interrupting Cas's warm skin.

He grabs Cas's hand. Lifts it into the air to squint at it in the light coming through the blinds.

The ring's on it.

Dean stares.

Then it's like he can't roll Cas over fast enough; he has him on his back, Dean straddling him, staring down at him. "Dude," he manages. "How'd you--where'd you--"

"It was on the floor." There's laughter in Cas's low voice, but arousal, too, to match what Dean can feel under his thighs, between them. "I take it you didn't put it there on purpose?"

Dean groans. Remembers tossing his white coat, and the ring box in it, carelessly across the room last night. " _Fuck_."

Cas raises his eyebrow at Dean's vehemence. "The answer is a positive one, in case you haven't already figured that out." His hand, the one with the ring, comes up to cup Dean's face.

"That's not the point!" Dean retorts. His voice is upset; he leans into Cas's touch without seeming to notice, his cheekbone against the smooth metal. "I had it all planned! I was going to take us to Joshua Tree, hide it in a bag of M&Ms like back in Girar--"

Cas leans up and kisses him.

When he pulls away a few moments later, Dean sucks in a long breath. Stares at him, lip wet, cheeks flushed.

Then he's pushing Cas back down onto the bed, one forearm planted beside his head and one arm splayed against his chest to brace himself as he lowers his mouth to Cas's, around Cas's. The kisses are more open mouths meeting than anything else, soft breaths exchanged, gentle swipes of tongue like caresses. Dean slides slowly down Cas's body until he's draped across him as they kiss, his hand under Cas's head now, elbow digging into the mattress, to tilt Cas's head down to him, and Cas scoots further down the mattress beneath him without breaking their mouths apart, lifts his knees for more traction.

Dean falls deeper between them, grinds down and feels the jump against his stomach, inside it. Fierce want, fierce joy; he pushes harder into Cas's mouth, licking to the top of his mouth, the warm hard curves of his teeth. Cas kisses back, tangles back, clenches his legs tight around Dean's hips, rough-soft hairs and hard muscles and Dean's pulling off Cas's mouth, turning his head into the hands that still cup his face, the cool band around the warm finger. He noses at it, mouths at it, and then he drags his mouth down to the end of Cas's long finger, closes his lips around it and opens his eyes. Gazes at Cas as he drags his tongue up the whorls of his fingerprint.

Cas is gazing back. His other hand cups Dean's chin, his thumb tracing the underside of Dean's lower lip. he says, "The answer's yes."

"No duh," Dean says, lazy and muffled, around Cas's finger. He sucks a second finger into his mouth with the first, then drags off them both with a pop before taking them in again. His eyes stay on Cas the whole time.

Cas is pretty sure it's a hint.

He reaches sideways without removing his eyes from Dean's, reaches for the drawer with the lube. Dean's eyes flutter shut, he makes a sound around Cas's fingers that Cas is pretty sure is a reward for getting the hint. Cas bites his lip, achingly hard, and Dean's mouth curves into a smile around his fingers, like he knows. It makes Cas ridiculously harder, and Dean grins wider, bracing his elbows on either side of Cas's head to brace himself to grind them harder together. Cas arches, hand clenching in the sheets, and Dean says, "Careful, Cas, don't pull the curtain down," and when Cas opens his screwed-shut eyes, Dean is grinning. Grinning down at him, a string of saliva gleaming at the corner of his lip, so fucking shit-eating and delighted with himself that Cas reaches down and touches him _right there_ just to see that grin splinter into open-mouthed _fuck yes please._

 

\- o -

 

As they lie there afterward, sweaty and damp and perfect, Dean musters the strength to roll his head onto his cheek as he lies on Cas's chest.

"This probably isn't a good time to mention that I didn't want to spring for the jewelry polish until you said yes."

Cas lifts his hand from where it rests on Dean's ass. He regards the ring on his finger, and the white flecks spattering it.

He lifts it to his mouth and licks them delicately off.

Dean muffles a groan into his armpit. "You're gonna kill me, Cas."

"Perhaps," Cas says. "Luckily for you, I am skilled at cardiopulmonary resuscitation."

"No, you're not, you always break the CPR dummy."

"I'm ensuring adequate perfusion."

"You're breaking the guy's ribs, is what you're doing."

"Dummies have no ribs, Dean."

"You're right, you don't," Dean says, and attacks Cas's ribs with his fingers. Cas gasps, and squirms, and finally bursts into laughter, rolling to the side and trying to scramble out from under Dean's tickle attack. He topples off the bed in a twisted mess of sheets and howled laughter.

Dean scoots to the side of the bed and grins down at him.

Cas collapses onto his back on the floor, limbs askew. "You," he tells Dean breathlessly, "are an assbutt."

"I'm your assbutt," Dean says cheerfully.

Cas reaches up and grabs Dean's arm. Pulls Dean down, gently, and presses his mouth to his fourth fingertip.

"My assbutt," he says, curls his finger in a makeshift ring around Dean's.

 

\- o -

 

(After Round Two--or is it Three?--Dean lifts his head abruptly from the carpet. "Dude. Does this mean you're going to have a triple hyphenated name? Novak-Shurley-Winchester?"

"No," Cas says from where his face is mashed into Dean's arm. "It means you will. Go back to sleep, Mr. Winchester-Novak-Shurley."

"Oh, hell no!")

 

 

 


End file.
